Letter: My children won’t take Common Core tests

I am writing to you as the Board of Education president for Avoca Central School, as a father of four, and as a community member. After serious consideration and investigation, I have determined my children will not be taking the NYS Assessments as part of the NYS Common Core Initiative cheduled to begin on April 1.

My wife and I are REFUSING to subject our children to over 400 minutes of testing for absolutely no reason, and hope that you will consider doing the same for your third through eighth grade students. The Common Core Initiative is an unconstitutional overreach of governmental authority into local school districts.

While CCI proponents hail it as noble effort toward higher standards, there is little evidence to suggest the CC standards are in fact the highest possible standards available to our students. In fact, this effort to nationalize education robs states of their right to implement, and then later even raise standards as they determine necessary. The Common Core English standards reduce the study of literature in favor of information texts, for example, and promote a “school-to-work” agenda that directs children “where to go and what to learn” and this is of great concern to me. The CCI has been implemented by local school districts at varying levels before any cost analysis, piloting, or public (or PARENTAL) input. In fact, states were bribed with incentives to be part of the Common Core agenda, and both Congress and all of the state legislators in the 45 states that signed onto it were bypassed in the decision to implement it. States were essentially coerced into adopting the CC agenda by being promised grant monies and by threats that Title One funds would be taken away if they did not sign on. These are lies meant to intimidate and instill fear, and I hope you will not believe them. In addition to concerns about funding such an initiative (with costs estimated at $1.1 billion in NYS), when budgets are already stretched way too thin, I am quite concerned about the privacy invasions inherent therein. Perhaps most concerning are the lack of transparency in general about the standards themselves and the long-term implications for our children who are subjected to the new unpiloted and experimental standards. This is just a small representation of all that is bad about the Common Core Initiative.

I encourage the community of ALL NYS school districts to attend BOE meetings, attend Common Core informational meetings, and do your own research about the unconstitutional power grab that is taking place all around us, at the expense of your children and mine. The best way to show your opposition to this agenda is to have your children opt out of state testing this spring, and to voice your concerns to district administrations directly. I hope you will join me in exercising your right to do so.